While a few prominent retired NBA athletes stepped in it this week while turning the surprise run by the South Sudan men’s national basketball team to the Paris Olympics into a joke, longtime NBA front office executive turned media personality Amin El-Hassan set the record straight on the team and its history Thursday.
El-Hassan, who is Sudanese, spoke on The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz about why the story behind Luol Deng building the South Sudanese program from the ground up is something more people should inform themselves about and rally behind rather than turning it into a punchline for clicks.
“I’m always rooting for Team USA except Saturday,” El-Hassan explained. “I was rooting for South Sudan because this is something that cuts as close to home as possible. And it would have been the greatest upset in the sport, maybe in the history of all sports.
“Because when you consider the lack of resources available, the relative newness of this program, what they’ve been able to accomplish, it’s nothing short of remarkable. This is Miracle on Ice, this is Rudy, this is Hoosiers, this is every single one of those hokey, Disney-style movies of a Goliath versus a David. And David almost won on Saturday.”
South Sudan faced the U.S. men’s national basketball team last weekend in a tune-up game before the Olympics, where both teams will be in the same group during the first round of competition. The game came down to the final play before LeBron James sealed a U.S. win.
“That program doesn’t get to where it is with someone filled with vile and vitriol, it gets there with someone (Deng) who’s filled with positivity and class,” El-Hassan said. “Having said that, I am friends with Gilbert Arenas, I am friends with Paul Pierce. And I understand what they were going for, they were going for the quote-unquote ‘funny’ … the problem is in our society today, we have a big issue parsing between, ‘this is information’ and ‘this is guys making jokes.'”
El-Hassan said he understood where Arenas and Pierce were coming from, but hopes for better discussion in the future when the story is bigger than just basketball or sports.
“The reality is, what Luol said stands. In that moment where there was an opportunity to support something that hasn’t gotten support, that isn’t getting love from left and right, you could have supported it. Instead, they chose to make a joke,” El-Hassan added.
“And I know it’s in them to do that, because I hear how hard Gilbert Arenas goes for Bronny James …It’s the same thing, except South Sudan doesn’t have a rich, famous dad who’s the best to ever do it. South Sudan is the little engine that could.”
Arenas has since apologized for his comments following Deng’s rebuttal and pushback from Cameroonian Team USA star Joel Embiid. Pierce apologized on Wednesday.
El-Hassan detailed how like Deng, who grew up in Great Britain after initially fleeing to Egypt with his family during the country’s civil war, many of South Sudan’s players are coming together after their early lives were impacted by political turmoil in the region.
“A lot of these players grew up in either America or Australia or anywhere else in the world. You know why? Because they’re all victims of one of the biggest refugee crises in the history of mankind,” El-Hassan said. “These are people who are coming from the most dire of backgrounds, who grew up away from their homeland, who had to experience xenophobia and racism from a very young age.”
El-Hassan questioned whether anyone at FS1 or Arenas’ digital show prepped for these conversations or cared how their comments would come across. And he implored media professionals to strive for better.
“There’s never going to be a shortage of people who are here just for the jokes, or just for divisiveness, or just for something disrespectful to be said,” he said. “We used to have one court jester and then a whole court of nobles. And now, it’s like flip-flopped.”
Not only are Arenas and Pierce prominent voices in basketball media, they are perceived as experts as former players. Perhaps this can be a reminder to try a little harder next time.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.